Coffee-Table Notes

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars    John Buchan probably couldn’t have predicted the liberties  maverick film director Alfred Hitchcock would take with his 1915 novel, in which dashing Richard Hannay takes flight to Scotland after a night at the theatre throws him into a world of intrigue and adventure. Hitchcock too might have raised an eyebrow regarding how writer Patrick Garland transformed his 1935 big screen adaptation into a pocket sized stage pastiche requiring just four actors to do the business.    Garland’s irreverent hybrid of Hitchcock and Buchan’s creations has run and run for two decades now and counting. Ben Occhipinti’s new Pitlochry Festival Theatre production breathes fresh life into a show that has tremendous fun with the existing material while managing to put a personal stamp on things.    This is led by Alexander Service as Hannay, who flaunts his character’s matinee idol looks with a nice line in self parody as he flees...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Four stars   Now, here’s a funny one. Take three comedians, household names the lot of them during the 1970s, and all used to dying a death on the variety circuit during their early years. Then, like some celestial impresario, put them on the same bill, and see who comes out laughing.    Such is the premise behind Paul Hendy’s play, revived for a UK tour following a west end run after being a hit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Hendy’s conceit is to put Tommy Cooper, Bob Monkhouse and Eric Morecambe in a grotty dressing room where the wall is adorned by photographs of other greats of the comedy world no longer with us.    Over the next eighty minutes, professional competition develops into a philosophical dissection of what people find funny. This is punctuated by some well-honed gags that sees each man go some way to reveal the personal drive behind their acts, be it Cooper’s ramshackle magic show, Morecambe’s double act with Ernie Wise...

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   The football season may theoretically be over for the summer, but as diehard fans know in their bones, it never really ends. With this in mind, this latest and apparently final run of Davie Carswell’s loving homage to one of Celtic Football Club’s greatest heroes, whose life was so cruelly cut short by skin cancer in 2008 aged just 51, could probably be seen as either a pre season warm-up.    And what a match Carswell and director Adam Felix O’brien have knitted together. Burns is brought to life by way of a series of dramatised anecdotes that make up the story of a man who came up from Glasgow’s Calton district to become a top-flight player and manager of the team that was already in his blood. As the play makes clear too, Burns never forgot his own description of himself as ‘a supporter who got lucky.’   Football may be at the play’s centre, but Carswell’s script focuses on the man beyond, be it as husband, father, devout Cathol...

Theatre 118, Glasgow Three stars   Serial killers have been a mainstay of true crime TV for decades. Julie Calderwood’s new play puts the makers of such programmes in the dock as much as their subjects in a work that looks at men in power and the abuses they wield on the women who get in their way.    Calderwood sets her play in a maximum-security prison, where man of the people TV host Hugo Cameron prepares for his exclusive interview with Thomas Cullen. Cullen is incarcerated for the murders of five women, but the interview is his last chance to convince the world of his innocence, with his on camera plea aimed especially at his daughter.    Before all that, researcher Grace has had to navigate her way between the two evils that confront her. On the one hand, putting up with Hugo’s old school obnoxiousness seems to be part of the job description. On the other, Thomas’ initial charm points to a different side of a man with nothing to lose.    On camer...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   Happy endings don’t come easy in Elizabeth Newman’s new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s twentieth century jazz age American classic. Produced for the 100th anniversary of the novel’s publication in this co-production between Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Derby Theatre, Fitzgerald’s ennui laden yarn of vaulting ambition lays bare how money may talk, but it also corrupts.    As with the book, the story is told by Nick Carraway, here a wannabe writer observing the scene he accidentally falls into with an eye for myth making where everything and everyone becomes material. And what a gift Jay Gatsby is, a self-made nouveau riche socialite with a murky background who only wants to impress his former lover Daisy. She may have sold her soul to marriage with nasty Tom, but is tempted back into Gatsby’s social whirl with devastating results.    Sarah Brigham’s production sets out its store on Jen McGinley’s neon tinged set of s...

Theatre 118, Glasgow Four stars   Everyone has their crosses to bear in Chris Patrick’s new play, in which a couple of believers meet in the sort of outdoor venue where decidedly unchristian things might happen in order to curry favour with the big guy upstairs. Our hapless pair aim to do this by way of hammer, nails, some handy DIY and a lot of faith to muffle the screams. When an angel finally does turn up to show them the way, rather than some beatific saviour bathed in a holy glow, this winged wonder is a grumpy naysayer who keeps his halo in his briefcase and is in permanent dispute with his boss.    The Lord moves in mysterious ways in Colin McGowan’s rapid-fire production that sees Patrick’s stream of one liners go beyond what initially looks like an extended routine into a scabrous comic look at the painful extremes of blind faith. Erin Scanlan’s naive disciple makes a kooky comic foil to Ross Flynn’s self appointed right hand man of God, played by Flynn as a...

Botanic Gardens, Glasgow Four stars   Don’t be fooled by the sound of thunder that opens this seasonal outdoor take on Shakespeare’s sauciest rom-com, already seen in several different guises over the last twenty-four years of Bard in the Botanics’ summer takeover of Glasgow’s leafiest gardens. The sound effect is likely just an in-joke on how many times rain has stopped play over the years.    This weekend, however, the gods - and more importantly, the sun - shone on Gordon Barr’s Celtic tinged affair that both sartorially and spiritually seemed to look to the early 1970s free festival scene. This was a time when assorted hippies, freaks and seekers after enlightenment jumped aboard the New Age caravan to get their collective heads together in the country.    Much of this styling is down to Carys Hobbs’ extravagant set and costume design, a magnificent multi coloured patchwork of faux regal exotica. The sound travelling from the two outdoor concerts in Gla...

Botanic Gardens, Glasgow  Four stars    The clock is ticking for the good doctor of Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy of self-destruction, brought to life for this year’s Bard in the Botanics season, tellingly titled Magic – mayhem – and murder.  Jennifer Dick’s three-actor version was first performed in the Kibble Palace back in 2016. Her revisitation is as much a trip into the perils of fantasy wish fulfilment as it was before in an even tauter eighty minutes that sees Faustus throw himself into a tug of love between the two extremes that seem to offer him a lifeline.    Having reached the pinnacle of his profession only to lose his mojo, Faustus’s desires go way beyond the appliance of science. As if by magic, Mephistopheles appears to make him an offer he can’t refuse. Only the Good Angel hanging on his shoulder is standing in his way.   As in Dick’s original production, Faustus is embodied by a returning Adam Donaldson as a frustrated academic wh...

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Three stars   Ghosts and a whole lot more are in the house in Ali Milles’ overloaded thriller, resurrected by the Original Theatre company following a truncated run in 2020 cut short by lockdown.    It begins simply enough, as the spirited Laura arrives at her family home in the hills with her older lover Suzanne in tow. Before the pair can settle in, unreconstructed family ghillie David arrives to check out the cottage hasn’t been occupied by interlopers. Other former residents soon make their presence felt, however, as what started out as a retreat for Laura and Suzanne becomes an almighty confrontation.    As time slips back and forth between Liza Goddard’s Enid all the way up to Laura’s own mother, history repeats itself by way of several generations of dangerous liaisons and secret affairs that make up a century spanning soap opera. Throw in some free thinking talk of witches and selkies and as the rocking chair springs into unoc...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Five stars   It’s a dog’s life for Ronnie, the man at the centre of Douglas Maxwell’s beautifully realised new play, brought to life in a heart wrenching solo turn by Jordan Young. In charge of five of his neighbours’ pet hounds, Ronnie’s entire life is kept on a pretty short leash as he attempts to navigate the assorted excitable personalities of his furry brood. Yet, for all he never quite bonds with his charges, and however hazardous their daily walks might be, their presence fills a vacuum in Ronnie’s own life that since the Covid induced lockdown has left him bereft. When a particularly chaotic morning finds one of the dogs raking up something unexpected in the woods, it is a necessary shock to the system.    There is huge heart at play in Maxwell’s writing, which looks at the fallout of everyday tragedy against a much larger backdrop to bring it emotionally alive in an immaculately structured work full of big ideas about humanity, loss and surv...

Oran Mor, Glasgow Four stars   “You are us,” says the Inquisitor of Peter Arnott’s play to his silent Prisoner at one point. This is a telling moment in this unspecified war of attrition that reveals the similarities as much as the differences between those in one conflict or another. Whether political, religious or generational, as the Inquisitor expounds on morality, ethics and all the contradictions at play that give us the excuse to square any circle we like in the name of whatever cause is going, for a veteran like him, this time it seems, it’s also personal.    Tom McGovern’s Inquisitor is every inch the establishment mandarin in Liz Carruthers’ suitably elliptical production, the final lunchtime offering from A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s spring and summer season. Sat in the old school splendour of designer Heather Grace Currie’s set, McGovern waxes forth from his desk while his Prisoner, initially bound, but always captive, acts as a human sounding board, never givin...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   Teenage dreams have rarely sounded sweeter than in Sam Hardie’s loving revival of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s original piece of rock and roll revivalism. Jacobs and Casey’s quifftastic confection may have been sweetened for Randal Kleiser’s smash hit movie that saw John Travolta and Olivia Newton John keep both the punk and disco hordes at bay from the number 1 pop chart slot in the summer of ‘78, but happy days are here again in a show that takes its moves more from the original stage show.    As good girl Sandy spars with tough guy Danny after a holiday romance that sees them join forces with their respective gangs once school starts. What follows sees them make a song and dance of an everyday tale of first love, peer group pressure, youth cult tribes, the growing pains of friendship and learning to be who you want to be that points to teen drama past, present and future. The mass earworm familiarity of Jacobs and...

Oran Mor, Glasgow Four stars    A storm is brewing over Mull in Amy Conway’s new comedy thriller that forms the latest offering from A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s current season of lunchtime theatre. Agnes and her American TV actor husband James have arrived late at the old house where they are having a belated honeymoon. Greeted unexpectedly by housekeeper Mrs Carlin, Agnes and James are also seeking to escape other domestic pressures. Once things start going bump in the night, however, old ghosts making their presence felt sees things spiral into a nightmare. Only when Agnes confronts a few demons does the storm calm.    Shades of Inside Number 9’s meticulously observed pastiches of hammy horror pulp fiction TV tropes abound in Katie Slater’s production of Conway’s script. This is the case from the creepy portrait of the former lady of the house Constance Laird resembling real life characters, to Manasa Tagica’s Jack appearing to believe he is in a reality show. ...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Three Stars    Art, money and murder are at the heart of this latest adaptation of thriller writer Peter James’ Detective Roy Grace novels. Here, James, adaptor Shaun McKenna and director Jonathan O’Boyle here fling our hero into the cut and thrust world of art forgery, where greedy collectors salivate over reproductions of old masters that even con galleries into thinking they’re showing originals.   Roy and his sidekick Bella are investigating a murder that leads them to master forger Dave Hegarty, who Roy got banged up back in the day. Dave may have given up knocking out counterfeit Lowrys, but he can still turn his hand to doing a classic or two when required. Meanwhile, Harry and Freya Kipling might just have got more than they bargained for down at the car boot sale, and we’re not talking the 1970s swivel chair they picked up as well as a work in oils that was going for a song.   Cue predatory collector Stuart Piper and the gloriously nam...

Oran Mor, Glasgow Three stars   When Beyoncé came to Murrayfield in 2023 as part of her Renaissance tour, the bootylicious diva caused a sensation. Beyond the show itself, there was likely plenty of drama for her fan base who worship at her feet, and not just among the single ladies neither.    Take Jordan and Russell. The neon pink boudoir that passes for the living room of these gay best friends in JD Stewart’s new play for A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s lunchtime theatre season may be a shrine to their queen, but it also requires an overload of Febreze to clear the body odours that hang around.    Partly responsible for these is the bit of rough trade Jordan who has just beaten a hasty retreat with two stolen tickets in hand. When Russell gets home, the pair’s despair at their loss sees them embark on a quest for replacements that takes them from their friend Sooz’s cafe to the local cop shop that seems to be run by a refugee from the Village People. Finally, the...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars    Shakespeare’s Lear is a man at war in Ramesh Meyyappan’s radical reworking of one of the bard’s mightiest plays. Standing shell-shocked in a mini arena circled by sandbags, Meyyappan’s Lear is cast adrift from both his faculties and family, in conflict with himself as much as the three daughters who tend to him. Possessed with the overbearing anger of a parent whose children have learnt to stand up to him, Lear’s own increasingly infantile nature comes to the fore as his psychic wounds get the better of him.   All this is brought to life, not with soliloquies and verse, but with barely a word spoken over the show’s hour-long duration. As Lear shelters from the blast, Orla O’Loughlin’s exquisite production wraps an already moving depiction of a family at war inside David Paul Jones’ score. This moves between propulsive piano patterns and string based brooding to give the performance its emotional pulse. Derek Anderson’s lighting de...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh  Five stars    The heavens sound like they’re splitting in two at the opening of Katori Hall’s Olivier award winning play, which imagines Martin Luther King’s last night on earth in fantastical fashion. It is April 1968, and Dr King is checking into his regular room in the Memphis hotel room where he’ll meet his maker having just given the speech of his life. As he pretty much crawls through the door exhausted and clearly in pain, all he wants is to have some rest and a cup of coffee from room service.    When a precocious maid called Camae delivers Dr. King’s beverage on what she says is her first day, what appears to be an after hours flirtation takes a startling turn to the celestial as Camae reveals she knows things about King that only his closest intimates are aware of. By the end, King’s status as a reluctant prophet is guaranteed.    Rikki Henry’s revival of Hall’s 2009 play is a sensation. Taking an already rema...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   The quiet renaissance of Nan Shepherd had been a wonder over the last few years. Once neglected to the point of being erased from the twentieth century canon of Scottish letters, the belated publication of Aberdeenshire born Shepherd’s masterpiece, The Living Mountain, a personal memoir of the great outdoors that had lain unread in a draw for thirty years, tapped into a readership who similarly felt the transcendent nature of being alive with the hills. These days, Shepherd is rightly held up as great a writer as her peers, and her image can be found in the back of a Scottish five-pound note.   Richard Baron and Ellie Zeegen’s studio sized play rifles through Shepherd’s back pages for this dramatic homage that attempts to get to the heart of Shepherd while acting as something of a primer to those perhaps unaware of her life and work.    Flitting back and forth through assorted time zones between 1901 and 1981, Baron’s recast re...

Oran Mor, Glasow Four stars   Fame, as every wannabe pop star knows, costs. In the social media age, where everyone is famous for a lot less than five minutes, you can go viral as the next big thing one minute and be last year’s spam within seconds. This is the reality the two young women in Andy McGregor’s bite-size new musical are forced to square up to for this latest edition of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s ongoing lunchtime theatre season.    Jade is a serious budding songwriter with an introspective air who pens power ballads in her bedroom, and would prefer to blend into the background before heading off to university. Clare, on the other hand, may have the voice of an angel, but she‘s the life and soul of any party until she crashes. When an ill-timed incident is captured on Tik Tok, she becomes a star for all the wrong reasons. Not that this bothers her, mind you, as her craving for the spotlight makes for a lucrative if grotesque way to make the big time. Jade, mea...

Òran Mór , Glasgow Three stars   What makes a girl’s world is everything in Sara Amini’s new play, whether it is singing revolutionary anthems on the school bus with the gang, dancing at a wedding or singing at the temple of Madonna, Maria Callas and the sublime beats of Iranian pop. Unfortunately for Sara, the woman at the heart of Amini’s play, she grew up in Iran, where women aren’t allowed to sing.    Sara’s answer is to fling herself into a world where she can indulge her passions, from nightclubs to the stage in Paris, London and other hotspots where freedom isn’t frowned upon and she can chase her dreams. With her own child also coming of age, Saria must face up to choices she has no say in.    Amini and co-director Manuel Lavandera’s production sets out its store in Sara’s tastefully cluttered home in this A Play, a Pie and a Pint lunchtime presentation of a show by Amini’s Seemia Theatre company that opened at Camden People’s Theatre earlier this month....